31 January 2008

A very short while ago I sat staring at the contents of a package I had just received from the US Department of Veterans Affairs. It was a certificate with the US eagle and concomitant coat of arms emblazoned in gold at its top, which read, in relevant part, “The United States of America honors the memory of” my late father “in recognition” of his “devoted and selfless consecration to the service of our country in the Armed Forces of the United States.” It was signed by the current President of the United States.

As I stared blankly down at the awarded certificate and thought of my deceased father, the tears swelled and streamed down my face and I wondered how many thousands of sons and daughters of US armed forces Black American veterans had received such certificates honoring their fathers or mothers. I thought of the pain, futility and the utter horror of combat and of war for the masses of people. And then, like a lightning bolt, the thought struck me that some in this nation are actually seriously considering the candidacy of Barack Obama to be President of the United States and concomitantly Commander-In-Chief of its potent Armed Forces.

This is a man who has enjoyed the fruits of America at the blood and expense of Black Americans and others, but who has paid virtually no dues.

This is a man whose father had also enjoyed the fruits of university schooling in America but subsequently returned to his native Kenya.

This is a man, who also like his father before him, neither served in a branch of the US military nor in any organization in America opposed to US military adventurism.

This is a man who as a deeply corporate military industrial complex US Presidential candidate, has called for “unilateral” US military actions in other nations. [And why not? After-all, his father, himself, or his wife and children were not and will not be the ones killing and being killed.]

This is a man who, in Chicago, pretended to support the human rights of the Palestinian people but who is now known to be a huge supporter of the apartheid Zionists and their powerful and insidious political lobby in America. This is a man who dares opportunistically to feign admiration for the late Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., but does not share the collective memory, pain and deep concerns of Black America, other people of color, or even of numerous white Americans for that matter - in the ongoing struggle for equality and justice in this nation.[...]This man, Barack Obama, is but a more articulate, younger, and shinier version of the current and infamous US Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, adorning himself dangerously and abundantly in superficiality and double-speak.

Times are perilous and how deeply I fear for my Black, Brown, and Red sisters and brothers. Indeed, how I fear for America as a whole, and the peoples of the world. It would seem that the US imperialists of the corporate and military elite may have at last found a black face. Unfortunately, for the moment at least, some of the American people might very well be blinded by the lightness of this black face, until such time as the horrors really begin to sink in. But will it be too late then?